Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
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ers at all of the Sessions we attend of boards, commissions, authorities, study groups, zoning boards, regional commissions, town councils, supervisors, &c., &c. Many of the reports of these same meetings carried in other newspapers are actually secondhand—they’ll call up some public official later, and get what is sometimes a self-serving version of what happened. Sometimes, they are given actually erroneous verions of what happened.
So why can’t we keep informed, if we’re so all-fired eagerbeaver about keeping up with local government? Oh, there are a number of neat little tactics we have to deal with. People “forget” to tell us about special called meetings. They “overlook” someone on their mailing or calling list. Meetings are held and there’s nothing “secret” about them, you understand; it’s just that noorife knew there was a meeting, so how could anyone attend. “Study groups” manage to read some obscure phrase in the admittedly porous Virginia Freedom of Information Act, so as to justify the meeting “in executive session.” An elected body will vote, for a valid reason, to go into a private session, and then talk about everything else while the doors are shut—and the public shut out.
THERE ARE any number of cute little tricks, and yes, they all add up to “backroom politics.” Maybe nothing actually shady is involved, as we said, but it amounts nevertheless to a corruption of the public process.
We aren’t going to give up. But we’re also going to have to admit that as long as there are public officials who don’t give a rap about whether the public knows what they’re doing with public policies and public funds, it’s going to be hard.D.
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